Annie and the Caldwells: Can't Lose My (Soul) review – a joyous gospel family affair
Multigenerational gospel soul group Annie and the Caldwells are the rarest of things: a genuinely homespun family band. Formed in the 1980s as a way for matriarch Annie to keep her four children out of trouble, the group have spent the past four decades honing their richly melodic sound in their home town of West Point, Mississippi.
Their debut album, Can't Lose My (Soul), arrives on the heels of the acclaimed 2022 reissue of Annie's 1975 gospel record with her brothers the Staples Jr Singers, When Do We Get Paid, and its six tracks cover similar ground of spiritual struggle, redemption and grace with an updated, punchy backing track.
Sibling rhythm section Willie Jr on bass and Abel Aquirius on drums hold down a formidable groove, anchoring the uptempo funk of Wrong and polyrhythmic percussion of I Made It, while daughters Anjessica and Deborah and goddaughter Toni provide honeyed backing vocals on the title track. Yet, it's the mature husk of Annie's voice that commands most attention. Effortlessly soaring through the yearning emotion of Don't You Hear Me Calling and producing celebratory shouts on Dear Lord, her lead vocal carries a life's worth of experience that is joyous to hear.
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
‘I'm closer to the end than the beginning': British soul legend Omar on EastEnders, Stevie Wonder and his industry battles
Omar's fans are united in believing that he's a genius that should have been a superstar. 'The undisputed architect of what we now know as neo-soul', goes one YouTube comment, acknowledging that the British musician's albums predate the genre's US benchmarks such as D'Angelo's Brown Sugar and Erykah Badu's Baduizm. Another: 'Really don't know why Omar didn't go on to be big worldwide.' And then: 'D'Angelo was the closest they [America] had to someone of Omar's calibre and even he pales in comparison from a wholly musical standpoint.' 'That's dangerous talk!', the musician laughs when I relay the last quote back to him. But 40 years into his career, he's proud of his musical legacy. 'When I started out at 14, I said I wanted to make music that, as soon as you hear the first four bars, you know it's me,' he says. 'I think I've achieved that.' His other goal? 'To make pure bangers.' Born Omar Lyefook, the 56-year-old is an MBE-decorated multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter and sublime singer, who has scored a musical and acted in EastEnders. Stevie Wonder wanted to write a No 1 for him, and he's worked with the neo-soul era's US greats, including Badu, Common, Jill Scott and the late Angie Stone. While he may not have their profile, he's put out music since the mid-80s and his importance is acknowledged not just by YouTube commenters but by successive generations of tastemakers and artists, from livestreaming sensation DJ AG – who recently did a pop-up gig with Omar outside a London McDonald's – to Children of Zeus. As Konny Kon of that Manchester neo-soul duo puts it: 'Omar is a national treasure who laid the foundations. His production should be recognised just as much as his vocals.' I meet Lyefook at the Canary Wharf outpost of plush restaurant chain Boisdale, where he's playing with supergroup the British Collective. Their website's no-messing mission statement: 'to put the soul back into British R&B and keep it there.' 'I live in a world where Prince, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston are still alive,' says Lyefook, and he's not just feeling nostalgic because of music. 'There's certain things about this era where I'm like, can we rewind? All this madness with Trump, the wars …' He pauses. 'It's a lot to get into. I'm just a vibes man.' That's modest. Lyefook longs for unity on his optimistic ninth studio album Brighter the Days, a self-described magnum opus over 18 tracks, originally born of lockdown frustration. 'I'm closer to the end than I am the beginning, and I refuse to be negative about stuff,' he says. 'I need to find the good in everybody.' In person, he's exceptionally down-to-earth but on record, he has a supernatural gift for blending genres like funk, jazz, samba, hip-hop and salsa, and on Brighter the Days, he turbo-charges this with lush strings. There's plenty of transatlantic guests, too, plus others closer to home in Brighton – namely his teenage twin daughters. 'I had to pay them proper rates. £200!' Lyefook grew up in a musical family in Kent: those Latin influences could have subconsciously come from his Cuba-born grandmother, his Chinese-Jamaican father is a reggae drummer who put out his son's first singles on his label, and his siblings are all musicians. He was classically trained at Guildhall School of Music and Chetham's, and his first professional gig was playing percussion with Paul Weller's Style Council in Japan in 1989. Weller offered his studio for Brighter the Days and played on the track On My Own. 'That dude had [about] five albums out in one year' recently, Lyefook jokes. 'It took me seven to get one out.' His breakout moment was in 1990 with There's Nothing Like This – and at the time, there really wasn't. Riffing on Ohio Players' Heaven Must Be Like This, the gently sinewy soul-jazz ballad detailed a romantic night in, over a seriously memorable groove. 'I just pictured a fireplace, a rug … Fuck knows what 'champagne wine' is,' he hoots. The song and album of the same name each went Top 20 when they were rereleased on Norman Jay and Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud label a year later. Lyefook fondly recalls that time: the acid-jazz explosion, driving his Saab convertible around London clubs and getting his trademark eyebrow piercing. But while he earned the respect of critics, execs at the major label that owned Talkin' Loud offered less support. 'Norman and Gilles being DJs, they're into the music. The higher ups, they're not,' he explains 'They'd say, 'there's no budget for videos', but then they're giving budgets to all the rock acts.' Those execs asked for his string sections to be played on synths, 'so we don't have to pay the musicians. Then Jason Donovan had a song out on the same label and he's got the exact same string section I was using.' His subsequent albums didn't break him in the US, despite cameos such as Wu-Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard who was enlisted on 1997 track Say Nothin' for '10 grand, two hookers and a bottle of Baileys,' laughs Lyefook. 'I had nothing to do with it!' Meanwhile, in the UK, 'it was one in, one out'. An A&R told his manager: ''We don't need Omar, we've got Craig David.' It doesn't matter where I go, there's something stopping me from getting that attention.' But he doesn't like to dwell on it. 'If I wasted time thinking about that then it might affect my creativity.' Lyefook has released plenty of albums in the following years, and his track It's So, a euphoric Afrobeat-style shuffle, has endured in DJ sets since it first lit up dancefloors in 2004. He's rarely stopped gigging, yet he hasn't put out an LP since 2017. Instead, there have been forays into acting: in 2022, he was on Albert Square for a two-week stint playing Avery Baker, estranged brother of Mitch Baker. 'When they showed me the part, it's a dude who wears a three-piece suit, smoking a cigar, driving a Bentley and playing the piano in the pub.' So not that far from real life? 'Exactly. I was like, 'This is me'.' Brighter the Days took a while on several fronts: finishing songs, finding a label and finalising paperwork with collaborators (he also underwent brachytherapy in 2024 for early-stage prostate cancer). Lyefook wanted Common, who he'd worked with on the rapper's seminal 2002 album Electric Circus, but it wasn't to be. 'I'm a big believer in timing. First time I was meant to work with Stevie, it took eight years. Don't set your watch by him, put it that way.' In 1992, he was in LA, and his manager also had Wonder as a client. 'He played my album to him. Stevie wants to write my first No 1. Fantastic! Midnight, I got the call: come down to the studio. Finally, he's ready. We're talking. And then …' He snores. 'So that was the end of that session. I waited all day for him to fall asleep.' 'Then seven or eight years later, I got a phone call out of the blue when I'm in London: 'Yo, man, it's your boy'. Who's that? 'Steve!' Steve who? 'Stevie Wonder!' Yeah, bollocks – sing me something. And he did.' For the next two weeks, 'I was like his ambassador. I had to take him to restaurants, clubs, hotels. We finally went to the studio, but the song we started with, it's alright but it's not blowing my skirt up. And then I had an idea to take him to my friend's studio where they were jamming' (the result was the 2006 track, Feeling You). Another session involved the late beatmaker J Dilla who Lyefook had met through Common in Detroit around 2000. 'We went to a strip club, J Dilla paid for a stripper, and then we went to the studio. It seemed to be a normal Tuesday for him!' A beat that Dilla made with Omar in mind was recently rediscovered by Lyefook's brother, the producer Scratch Professer, but 'it wasn't ready for this album, probably the next one'. Among the guests that did make it on to Brighter the Days is UK rapper Giggs. 'I wasn't that aware of him before,' says Lyefook – Giggs wrote 'Yo, uncs!' as he reached out via Instagram. 'That's what they call me now. Well, it's better than grandpa.' British rap, he says, can be 'gritty, and you got to be hardcore' – very different to the 'good times, barbecues, chilling out' vibes of soul (though the pair find mutual ground on We Can Go Anywhere, where Giggs invites you to help yourself to his party buffet). Lyefook appreciates grime, he says, but 'it's so not my world. I mean, Stormzy's album cover [2017's Gang Signs and Prayer] was how many men in balaclavas? Great artist, but they didn't have that in Canterbury.' Lyefook once protested the Mobos for not having a soul category. His peers, including Bluey from Incognito, unrolled posters on the red carpet reading Mobos: Where's Your Soul? 'And so they relented and made it R&B/soul – but those are two different animals,' Lyefook laments. 'One year I got nominated and Adele's in the same category. It's not just a black and white thing, it's generational. I'm just filler.' The musician is content these days, however, with his elder statesman role. 'It used to be, 'my sister likes your music'. Then 'my mum likes your music'. Now it's 'my nan likes your music',' he quips. 'I've been lucky – they passed it down through the generations.' While other musicians are part-time, he continues, 'I've managed to make a career that can pay the bills. It's not ostentatious. I would love it to be. But the love that I've been getting has been enough.' Brighter the Days is out now on Impressive Collective and BBE Music
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82
Sly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors with his gloriously funky and often socially conscious songwriting, has died aged 82. 'After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend and his extended family,' a family statement reads. 'While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.' With his group Sly and the Family Stone, Stone tied together soul, psychedelic rock and gospel into fervent, uplifting songs, and became one of the key progenitors of the 1970s funk sound alongside James Brown and others. The group's hits include three US No 1 singles – Everyday People, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and Family Affair – plus Dance to the Music, I Want to Take You Higher, Hot Fun in the Summertime and more. The 1971 album There's a Riot Goin' On, a moody reflection on civil rights and the corrupted idealism of the postwar era created predominantly by Stone apart from the rest of his band, is widely regarded as one of the greatest of the 20th century. Born Sylvester Stewart to a Pentecostal religious family in Texas in 1943, Stone grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first music came in a gospel quartet with three siblings, the Stewart Four, who put out a locally released single in 1952. As a young man he became well known in the fertile musical scene of countercultural San Francisco: a multi-instrumentalist and radio DJ who had a series of local bands and worked as a producer for garage rock and psychedelia groups such as the Beau Brummels. In 1966, he fused his band Sly and& the Stoners with his brother Freddie's group Freddie and the Stone Souls, to form Sly and the Family Stone. Their breakthrough came the following year with Dance to the Music, and success was fully established by their fourth album in two years, Stand! (1969), which eventually sold more than three million copies. The band's stylistic and racial diversity attracted a broad audience, and they played both of the defining music festivals of 1969, Woodstock and the Harlem cultural festival. Hits continued more fitfully during the early 1970s, and the group – notorious for no-shows at concerts – slowly fractured amid increasing drug use. Stone would record There's a Riot Goin' On predominantly on his own, applying one of the earliest uses of a drum machine; albums such as Fresh!, with its Richard Avedon portrait of Stone on the cover, were also primarily his work. The band split entirely in 1975, though Stone continued to use the band name for solo releases. Despite having laid the rhythmic groundwork for disco, Stone couldn't sustain his career in the late 1970s, and his addiction to cocaine worsened. He continued to perform with peers such as Funkadelic and Bobby Womack, but album releases dried up after 1982's Ain't But the One Way. He was arrested in 1983 for cocaine possession, and for driving under the influence of cocaine in 1987, prompting him to flee California for Connecticut. He was apprehended two years later, and sentenced to 55 days in prison, five years' probation and a fine. His difficulties meant that he was little seen during the 1990s, and it wasn't until 2006 that he performed in public again, at a tribute to Sly and the Family Stone at the Grammy awards. He performed with the Family Stone on a tour the following year, but often erratically, and made a lacklustre appearance at 2010's Coachella festival. His final album, I'm Back! Family & Friends, featuring re-recordings of old songs alongside three new tracks, was released in 2011. In 2015 he was awarded $5m in a lawsuit against his former manager and attorney, successfully arguing that royalty payments had been diverted from him, though he ultimately wasn't awarded the money due to the terms of a 1989 royalties agreement with a production company. Difficulties with royalties meant that Stone spent many of his latter years in poverty; in 2011 he was living in a campervan in a residential area of Los Angeles – voluntarily, he claimed – and relying on a retired couple for food. 'Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,' the family statement added. 'His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable. In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course, which follows a memoir published in 2024.' He was married from 1974 to 1976 to Kathy Silva, with whom he had a son, Sylvester Jr. He later had two further children: Sylvyette with Cynthia Robinson, and Novena Carmel.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Secret meaning behind Cynthia Erivo's Tony Awards dress leaves viewers emotional... did YOU catch it?
Cynthia Erivo opened the 2025 Tony Awards with a dazzling performance... but it was her choice of ensemble that has truly caught everyone's attention. The actress and singer, 38, displayed her amazing vocals as she kicked off the show by singing an original song called Sometimes All You Need Is a Son. It contained clever tributes to many of the nominated Broadway shows sprinkled throughout the lyrics and a slew of backup singers who added a gospel touch. Cynthia - who is hosting the star-studded event - opted for a sparkly, floor-length red dress for the performance, which contained a white belt and collar. Fans were quick to notice a small detail about the stunning gown that left them emotional. Many theorized the ensemble had a hidden meaning behind it and that gave a nod to an iconic Broadway show. Viewers rushed to X, formerly Twitter, to point out that the dress looked just like the red gown that the titular character wears in the beloved musical Annie. 'Cynthia Erivo looking like Annie I think I am gonna like it here,' one user wrote. Viewers rushed to X, formerly Twitter, to point out that the dress Cynthia wore looked just like the red gown that the titular character wears in the beloved musical Annie 'Cynthia in this little orphan Annie fit,' added another. 'Anyone else see it?' asked someone else alongside a side-by-side of Cynthia on stage and Annie in the 1982 film. 'Thought she was dressed kind of like Santa for a hot minute before I realized it is more likely a nod to Annie,' read a fourth tweet. A different person joked that the dress was 'giving sexy orphan Annie.' Cynthia drew a mixed reaction from the performance, with some fans calling it electrifying and others branding it cringeworthy. Others slammed Oprah Winfrey for 'crashing' Cynthia's moment. The 38-year-old had just begun her walk from backstage to center stage when Oprah suddenly appeared onscreen to offer her support. The iconic TV host even referenced Cynthia's now-viral finger-holding moment with Ariana Grande during last year's Wicked promo tour. But viewers slammed her involvement as 'unnecessary' and distracting. 'Oprah had to ruin the moment. Of course she had to put herself in the beginning #TonyAwards,' one frustrated fan posted. Another chimed in, 'Oprah was unnecessary #TonyAwards.' And a third wrote bluntly, 'Why does Oprah have to be in everything?' The Tony Awards kicked off at 8pm and is honoring the biggest stars and shows on Broadway. It will feature a slew of dazzling performances from some of the hottest shows of the year - as well as an emotional reunion from the original Hamilton cast in honor of the 10th anniversary. While some stars wowed in glamorous dresses and stunning looks on the red carpet before hand, others completely missed the mark with their ensembles.
